The blog for the Celebrity Series of Boston- a Boston based arts organization which presents an annual concert series. Here you can find news about our season, local and international arts, and much more! www.celebrityseries.org
The original painting of Nipper from 1899
On this day in 1900 the trademark His Master’s Voice, was registered at the U.S. Patent Office. The image of the Victor Recording Company(later RCA Victor) shows Little Nipper the dog, cocking his head at the sound of his masters voice coming from the horn of a gramophone machine.
The story of Nipper can be found here.
"Without silence there is no music. Not simply because the faculty of hearing deteriorates from constant exposure to noise, but because silence is both the majestic frame and the stable solution for musical (and poetic) ideas. Silence is the soda water, the bracing ether, the bridge and mode of respect for receiving instructions from the angel. Or as wise Schnabel described his own gift, other pianists played the notes more perfectly, but nobody could play the rests better."
-Russell Sherman in Piano Pieces (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996)
Downbeat Magazine, March 1958
I have been waiting for an opportunity to post on this story. Steve Schwartz, host of Jazz From Studio 4 on WGBH-FM, writes about a heartwarming experience he had with a man he never met. The man was Mike DiMichele, an Ipswich musician who left his vintage jazz record and magazine collection to Schwartz out of admiration for his program. The Jazz From Studio 4 tribute to DiMichele aired on April 7 and the magazine's were donated to The Institute for Jazz Studies at Rutgers University. Somehow, I bet Boston hasn't heard the last of these records.
Here's a bit of Steve's essay:
"I was overcome with emotion to think that a man whom I had never met nor heard of had thought enough about jazz music and what I do on the radio to think that I would be a good repository for his collection, built up over a lifetime of playing and listening."
Such a nice story. A tribute to both Mike and Steve.
This is a shot from the 2003 AileyCamp Boston final performance, which takes place in August. The long road to that performance begins today at the Boston Renaissance Charter School. Visit this blog for more info on developments at the Camp and the final performance.
Today is both the birthday of our nation and the birthdate, in 1826, of American Song composer Stephen Foster in Lawrenceville, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Victor Borge
On this date in 1945 Danish concert pianist and comedian Victor Borge premiered on NBC radio. The network gave the comedian/pianist the summer replacement slot for Fibber McGee and Molly.
The Celebrity Series presented Victor Borge 8 times between 1963 and 1999; he died in 2000.
The following quotes are attributed to Mr. Borge:
Alex Ross has posted on The Rest is Noise a bit of poetry/word association from a Wesleyan student on the Shostakovich String Quartets: Fifteen ways of looking at Shostakovich. For those with the time, there are lots of possibilities along these lines...
